Jim Keirns

Background

About Jim Keirns

For many years Jim has been active in Technical Groups in the Drug Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology area, and in addition in cardiac safety/QTc. In 2002 Jim joined Fujisawa Healthcare, Inc, as Senior Director of Biopharmaceutical Sciences. In this position Jim was responsible for Fujisawa’s activities related to pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism and clinical pharmacology in North America. In 2005 the merger of Fujisawa and Yamanouchi formed Astellas, and in 2010 the corresponding departments in US and the Netherlands merged. Previously, Jim joined Boehringer Ingelheim and founded the Biochemistry Department, which covered both discovery biochemistry and DM & PK. When R&D was organized into Discovery and Development functions, Jim became Director of Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics. During his last three years at Boehringer Ingelheim, Jim was Director of R&D Strategic Planning. In this position Jim introduced decision analysis to Boehringer Ingelheim, especially to help make smarter decisions at the milestones for product candidates and for allocation of resources to projects. Jim received his BA degree in Physical Chemistry from Rice University, where he conducted undergraduate research and published with Robert Curl, Jr.(Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1996). Jim received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale University for work on the enzymology of photosynthetic electron transport. Jim did postdoctoral research in Yale Medical School, where he conducted some of the key experiments to demonstrate the role of cyclic GMP in the transduction of light to neural signals in the retina. Specialties: Clinical Pharmacology. Strategy for translation of new pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical product candidates from preclinical into clinical development. International Drug Development.